Dr. Andrew Weil was a good boy with bad intentions. In fact, he may turn out to have been one of the most subversive hippies of them all. Not because he wanted to hurt anyone or blown up any buildings. No, he wanted to explode something far more heavily protected than a bank.
From the beginning, Andrew Weil dreamt of blowing peoples' minds. He wanted to slip past their defenses by impressing them with his impeccable credentials: undergrad and medical degrees from Harvard University, medical residency at Mass General Hospital-one of the most prestigious in the world, researcher at the National Institutes of Health, author of many books and articles, student and friend of Richard Evans Shultes (see last month's profile in this space), and so on. Once accepted as a trusted authority and admired colleague, he'd quietly plant the cognitive bombs.
This pattern was obvious in his early years. Weil knew he wanted to study medicine at Harvard. But did he begin by focusing on chemistry or biology, like everyone else? No, his undergraduate degree is in botany. While the study of plants may seem an obvious preparation for a shamanic healer, it was an unusual preparation for medicine at Harvard in the early 60s. But with his characteristic blend of sharp intelligence, hard work, and charm, he was successful in doing things his own way.
When Weil decided to research the effects of marijuana, he was one of the first scientists to apply the double-blind methodology to such investigations (where neither the subject nor the investigator knows who has taken the drug and who has taken the placebo). Although this procedure was already considered standard practice in those days, sloppy scientific methods were apparently acceptable when studying "illicit" drugs as long as the results confirmed the prevailing assumptions.
The combination of solid scientific methodology and novel experimental designs led to some fascinating, if unwelcome, conclusions concerning the effects of marijuana. Weil's research led a paper published in Science (December, 1968) - while he was still just a medical student. In a chapter called "What No One Wants to Know About Marijuana," from his first book (The Natural Mind), Weil discusses his results, which included this: "In some cases, the performance (of regular smokers) even appears to improve slightly after smoking marijuana."
What kind of science is this? Weil had reasonably concluded that it was not good science to test people who were experiencing an altered state of consciousness for the first time and then generalize these findings (as all previous researchers had done). So he used some subjects who were familiar with the effects of marijuana and gave them the opportunity to practice various tasks while stoned. Then he tested them and compared the results. Perfectly logical. Excellent science. Extremely unwelcome results.
That was the beginning of a career that has included the study of altered states of consciousness (Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, 1980), psychoactive substances of all kinds (From Chocolate to Morphine, 1983) native healing techniques and integrative medicine (Spontaneous Healing, 1995). Andrew Weil is now one of the most famous physicians in the United States and has done as much as anyone to move the medical establishment toward acceptance of carefully researched alternative (or, as he prefers to call it, complementary) medical practice.
That's one dangerous hippie.
